


Paroxysm

by nimiumcaelo



Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, POV First Person, POV Nick, the meeting with Daisy in Nick's house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 20:03:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13666314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimiumcaelo/pseuds/nimiumcaelo
Summary: “I can’t tell you just how wonderful [he] is. I don’t want you to know. I don’t want any one to know.”--This Side of Paradise





	Paroxysm

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my old tumblr [here](https://teaandfeelings.tumblr.com/post/158705337756/natsby-03).

While you couldn’t say I was happy about participating in Gatsby’s schemes to win over Daisy, I wasn’t exactly morose. There was an element of usefulness that came with it, and for someone so desperate to portray the right image as Gatsby, my part in this whole thing cast a rather favorable light on myself, when otherwise I might just disappear in the shadows. Though he was extremely on edge, he also kept thanking me in a manner that bordered on imprudent. I would push aside the praise, giving the impression that I was used to such excessive gratitude and that it was to be expected. It wasn’t entirely truthful, but then he wasn’t either. 

When the time came for him to arrive, I opened the door on a man practically convulsed with anxiety, and I longed to be able to squeeze his shoulder or something to that effect and assure him it would all be fine in the end. I don’t know if I actually believed it would be, but I certainly hoped it would. I had never met someone so bursting with hope and I would not - _could_ not - be the one to rain on his metaphorical parade. 

Thus, as he stalked past me like an automaton into the room with his darling, I felt a great deal of shame for secretly hoping that she would rebuff him. I scolded myself, repeating that it could never truly be, and that some happiness for the man was what he deserved, not another rejection. I was not a suitable replacement for my cousin, no matter how hard I wished that I was, and my advances would only fill him with a sense of enslavement, as if he owed it to me to play the part after what I had done, completely of my own volition, for him. That was not true, and it would never be. 

The message was pounded into my head with the raindrops that fell from the sky, and I would not believe that I was disappointed. How could I be? To think that I had hoped - had dreamed - that Gatsby would ever want me as I wanted him - it was pure folly. I emptied my mind of the troubling thoughts and thought of Daisy. She would be happy, and Gatsby would be happy. These moments of selflessness were worth it, I told myself, if it would make two people I pseudo-cared for happy. Or so I told myself.


End file.
